Contrary to what had been accepted as conventional wisdom, America’s red counties have a higher percentage of stable families than those in blue counties.
According to a study from the Institute for Family Studies, red counties tend to have more married adults, more children born within marriage and higher levels of children living with both biological parents than blue counties.
“The reddest counties have higher rates of family stability, which is surprising because red counties, especially in the South, tend to have higher divorce rates,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, senior fellow with the Institute for Family Studies and author of the study. “But what seems to be happening here is that non-marital childbearing has emerged as a bigger engine of family instability than divorce in America. And this brief indicates that non-marital childbearing is lower in redder counties.”
But this finding contradicts previous research outlined in Naomi Cahn and June Carbone’s “Red Families v. Blue Families,” which concluded “blue families” are stronger than “red families.”
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